Posted by dwwoelfel 7 hours ago
The only problem I have is doing it comfortably. My desk is cluttered with a keyboard, laptop, and monitor. There’s barely any room to write with proper posture, and shuffling things around every time just isn’t practical
So I have this massive stack of notes that I glimpse at before shredding or whatever. Nothing of permanent value, nothing that I look at even 24 hours after it is written. But the sheer volume of the writing like that I do surprises me ever time I clean it out. It's like a novella sized stack of paper with server names, sketchy diagrams, peoples names, dates, commit hashes, debug messages. Lots and lots of lists. Things underlined, circled, stars, strike through, arrows, etc.
It is such an ingrained habit that its almost a compulsion, like someone is tying my hand behind my back if I don't have access. It is like my brain needs reassurance that some detail I just noticed won't be lost, at least it will be on the paper if I need it in the next 5 minutes. Like an extension of my short-term memory.
I have also kept a journal for 20+ years, mostly on paper. I often use a fountain pen (Lamy 2000) and notebooks with high-quality paper, but I am not super picky about it. I've used the cheapest school notebooks to the finest Japanese boutique papers. I'm a fan of the Pilot G2 and pens that have a similar feel. I'll also journal in Google Docs, Apple notes, or text docs in VS Code.
It is hard for me to disentangle the supposed benefits from the sheer weight of habit. It is just something I do, part of who I am.
To others: The book is called "The Artists Way", and is an excellent guide to become more creative and expressive.
Positive: - I can send PDFs of my notes out within a minute to any email - a lot less to carry around, I just make sure to keep it with me, nearly all the time - organizing notes retrospectively is a big leap forward from paper - I can just select lines of text I wrote and move them around, even shrink them a little (to fit an extra line of text or two on the same page)
So far I haven't gotten used to actually extracting the notes with the Kindle application on my PC, it's always going over Amazon's servers whenever I click "share" to export my notes...
How do you go about having AI conversations with your notes?
Anecdotally, it never helped me to remember the stuff I was writing down.
While writting I think there's a very fine line that separates external storage from memorization. What I mean by this is that sometime we write ideas so we can avoid forgetting and be able to come back them (David Lynch), or as we write and develop a thought or subject, we are actually creating memories.
I think the point of writing stuff down is mainly organization, storage and exploration and not a memory exercise.
I've incorporated back writing by hand some time ago but find as models get smarter and I throw more at them they have also been taking longer.
In these moments even a notebook can register as something of a distraction. I already aim to keep my phone far away but I'm curious about trying to commit to meditating between prompts. Part of me feels like it would be a little silly. But maybe not.
Doodling in a notebook feels preferable in these moments but also feels like a context switch when the agent is done. Then again perhaps I need to just refine my process so notebook planning can feel like it is working more in parallel with the LLM rather than us blocking each other...
This. Don't use pencil or normal ballpoint bell with thick ink. Good gel pens are really good and not that much more expensive.
I watched a video recently from someone, from memory the creator behind the youtube channel vsauce. Very briefly, he lost some notes to water. His words, thoughts and ideas vanished. His solution was switching to pencil.
I found the interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfY2JACiDGU
I'm addicted to people talking about pens and pencils. Adam Savage also has done a few videos on his favourite mechanical pencil.
Apparently Stephenson loves fountain pens and reluctantly gel pens. In general, those are water based inks and will wash away with water. There are one or two fountain pen inks designed to be more permanent and won't wash away with water.
Just something to keep in mind if you're currently writing or want to start.
To be fair, your notebook probably won’t get light like that, but pencils are pretty archival.
I saw another video about someone's favourite pen and he gave the reason as check fraud. Apparently the uniball 207 is pigment based ink and doesn't wash away in acetone.
I just searched then on youtube for acetone pen check fraud and it looks like there's a 13 year old video about it, and a million copycats. Either copycats are lazy, or the 207 is still $2 13 years later.